Chicago: The formula for a
variable
capacitor is C = kA, where A is the angle. (You're welcome.)

titus: Xerces-C++ sucks
rocks, always
has. For
objective evidence, see how many (of what, 20K?) Debian
packages depend on
libxerces27. Not counting other libraries, I find:
enigma, a game; anymeal, a cookbook
database, and anon-proxy, an HTTP proxy daemon. It
would be extremely unwise to make anything that matters
depend on Xerces-C++. Among the first things I did at ITA
Software, in 2001, was to replace Xerces-C++ in their system
with libxml2. My current employer has just done the same.

lucasr: Python, Perl and
Ruby really are the VB of the Free Software world. On the
upside,
people do get a lot of work done in VB. By the way, the
value of a Paul Graham article halves for each mention of
Lisp in it. The best ones don't mention Lisp at all. (That
one has value 0.5.)

slef: Thank you for the
pointer to
ytplay. (It's an annoying script, but very fixable.)

Burgundavia: By the
link you posted, it
appears that most people don't do tech, and in particular
don't do Free Software, in large part because they don't
like meritocracies. The difference seems to be that
men are much more inclined to identify as unlike (and, in
particular, better than) others, and thus likely to find
meritocracy appealing,
offering a much larger pool to draw upon. Worrying about
rudeness (which is far from unique to tech) just distracts
us from the real problems.